[nbeleski]

As someone who have computer modelling as a core of my research it makes me happy to see this quote mentioned here.

People on other science forums are generally fast to dismiss computer models as 'unrealistic' and 'non-representative', disregarding their utility.

For those interested in models I always recommend looking at Schelling's segregation model for starters, the premises and conclusions drawn from the experiment are quite interesting.

[jerf]

For myself, whenever I read about someone's new model and their predictions, I'm always looking to see what their model was verified against. If they've got a model, and it is verified to touch reality in some place we can check it, then I'm willing to at least listen to what the model says about where we can't touch, see, or test. It could be wrong, but it's at least the start of a conversation.

But if it's been verified against nothing, I don't have much interest in it.

Some examples of that include almost every model that claims to describe some element of human social interaction, which never seem to be checked against anything real that I can see, and I recall once reading an article and paper on modeling exoplanets and their likelihood of having life on them (or the likelihood of it being hospitable, not sure which) that flew so far beyond our science and data that the peer reviewers should be ashamed they ever approved it.

(Of course, if you want to publish your unvalidated model as an interesting piece of math, go nuts.)